The Grand Canyon [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Donald Davis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1955 | Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

Most people who decide to take the mule ride through the Grand Canyon focus on the spectacular beauty around them. Donald Davis, however, found his focus trained sharply on the 48-inch-wide trail whose ledge drops 700 feet to the Colorado River. Interweaving his trademark humor with vivid detail of perhaps the most remarkable experience offered by the National Park Service, Davis paints for us the stages of this adventure: the gleeful anticipation, the encounter with his own personal mule, the ....

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: August House; Abridged edition (January 1, 1955)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874835348
• ISBN-13: 978-0874835342
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,399,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Short Stories, December 13, 2000

By 

"knightangel" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Grand Canyon (Audio Cassette)

Okay. First off, I have to confess I bought this book by mistake. I was expecting to get a sort of audio guide to the Grand Canyon, so I was pretty disappointed when this turned out not to be the case.

The audiobook instead turned out to be two short stories: the first is, of course, 'The Grand Canyon', and the other is 'At Grandmother's House' (or something like that). 'The Grand Canyon' was a lot more enjoyable and funnier. It was a narrative about the writer's trip to the eponymous canyon and his self-deprecating humour got quite a few chuckles out of me.

'At Grandmother's House' recounts the author's trips to his grandmother's house in the woods when he was young, and concentrates on two incidents in particular, one involving imaginery bogeymen he was afraid of as a boy, and another involving a real bogeyman (well, actually an escaped criminal) hiding out near the house. Not terribly interesting a listen.

As an audiobook, it was pretty good. The reader has a wonderful gravelly voice, and a good sense of deadpan nuance which worked well, especially with the first story's self-deprecating humour.

So, a pretty average couple of stories, one somewhat better than the other, that were fairly entertaining and reasonably competent, but nothing to write home about. Three stars.

My Personal Rating Scale:
5 stars: Engaging, well-written, highly entertaining or informative, thought provoking, pushes the envelope in one or more ways, a classic.
4 stars: Engaging, well-written, highly entertaining or informative. Book that delivers well in terms of its specific genre or type, but does not do more than that.
3 stars: Competent. Does what it sets out to do competently, either on its own terms on within the genre, but is nothing special. May be clichéd but is still entertaining.
2 stars: Fails to deliver in various respects. Significantly clichéd. Writing is poor or pedestrian. Failed to hold my attention.
1 star: Abysmal. Fails in all respects.